David Brooks says I'm a natalist. Who knew?

From the New York Times Liberal Death Star today we get The New Red Diaper Babies.  Brooks starts strong, but then finishes with three paragraphs of pure wishful thinking.

All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling ... But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.

They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling.

In a world that often makes it hard to raise large families, many are willing to move to find places that are congenial to natalist values. The fastest-growing regions of the country tend to have the highest concentrations of children. Young families move away from what they perceive as disorder, vulgarity and danger and move to places like Douglas County in Colorado (which is the fastest-growing county in the country and has one of the highest concentrations of kids). Some people see these exurbs as sprawling, materialistic wastelands, but many natalists see them as clean, orderly and affordable places where they can nurture children.

If you wanted a one-sentence explanation for the explosive growth of far-flung suburbs, it would be that when people get money, one of the first things they do is use it to try to protect their children from bad influences.

Brooks is a damn good writer -- it's hard to find parts to cut out.  He has more good stuff, commented on a few days ago here at The Happy Carpenter.

As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates.

In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities - true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation - but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."

So far so good, but after a few paragraphs of information, Brooks goes off the rails into wishful thinking:

Natalists are associated with red America, but they're not launching a jihad. The differences between them and people on the other side of the cultural or political divide are differences of degree, not kind. Like most Americans, but perhaps more anxiously, they try to shepherd their kids through supermarket checkouts lined with screaming Cosmo or Maxim cover lines. Like most Americans, but maybe more so, they suspect that we won't solve our social problems or see improvements in our schools as long as many kids are growing up in barely functioning families.

Like most Americans, and maybe more so because they tend to marry earlier, they find themselves confronting the consequences of divorce. Like most Americans, they wonder how we can be tolerant of diverse lifestyles while still preserving the family institutions that are under threat.

What they cherish, like most Americans, is the self-sacrificial love shown by parents. People who have enough kids for a basketball team are too busy to fight a culture war.

And yet, we damn sure are on jihad, and though we're too busy to fight a culture war, we nevertheless do just that.  We are awake and aware as a social force.  We think of ourselves as a different and better kind of American, not just like them sophisticated city folks only diff'rint.  Some of us are trying to get our kids safely past Cosmo & Maxim; some of you are writing, publishing, and buying Cosmo & Maxim.  And we really don't lose sleep over anything including the words "diverse lifestyles."  In fact, we either go to sleep or commence to fightin' at the very words.

It doesn't scare me that Brooks and the Liberal Death Star are starting to figure this out.  The dues of joining the natalists are too high to be faked, and once you've natalized, those cute little natalees will make you change no matter how much of a metrosexual you were before the little darlings were born.

Comments

[Bone]

SO????? And then???

[pedro]

Welcome back, Bone!

[Mikey]

We didn't ask for a cultural jihad, we are a microcosm of the larger country. The main difference being that while the country as a whole was dashed in the face with ice water on 9/11, the milder folk have had to endure the onslaught of the 'intelligensia' Metrosexuals for the past 30 years. We're finally figuring out 'Hey we're the adults around here, you kids shut up and go to bed!'

[Rick the Bomber]

Okay - I'll step out of my element and be politically incorrect (fka honest, frank, blunt, etc.) We 'natalists' will win this jihad going away in less than a generation. And, the intelligentsia knew it before the election - hence the shrill, terror-stricken, panicked temper-tantrums. It's simple math.

Homosexuals (aka alternative lifestyles) don't reproduce. They are the union-workers of our parent's generation for the socialists (er, Democrats). Only their offspring will not vote 'D' because their parents did.

An educated black voter does not vote Democratic. This couldn't be more obvious than it is today. I don't think I have ever seen a well-spoken, intelligent, black person of influence that was a liberal. The left has Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The right has Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas. Clearly, an educated black population is the socialist's (er, xuse me, Democrat’s) worst nightmare. Hence, the left’s opposition to school vouchers and the basis for their unrelenting insulting racial slurs targeting every prominent and educated black person who is also conservative.

'Natalist's' are the glue that keep the country together and we will do our part to make more 'natalists' until things are back in balance – including ramping up the production lines and educating black children. I even know of one family who has leveraged their investment by adopting a black child to compliment their other four kids.

I doubt many in the blue counties got a child tax credit. They tend to have too much income, no income, or no kids. I would love to see the correlation of the recipients of the child tax credit to the vote.

In case y’all metrohomolimosocialistintelligentsia dumbasses ain’t figgerd it out yet, W ain’t no dummy.

[pedro]

"metrohomolimosocialistintelligentsia dumbasses"

You do know how to coin a phrase, Mr. Bomber!

[blue]

oh fuck you.

[TheGlimmering]

To be fair, we liberals/progressives/what-have-yous are not especially concerned over your fertility levels, least not when it comes to the balance of political power in this nation or the world (how it effects the environment is a different story). We're not concerned because our parents were conservatives, and their parents were conservatives. Nothing makes a child progressive like conservative parents, and you needn't take my word for it. Consider the fact that conservatives and evangelical Christians were once the majority in this nation, that their birth rates never dipped below those of the rest of the country, and yet they're in the minority today. This despite the fact that evangelical Christians produce more missionaries per capita than progressives! Maybe we're just not buying what you're selling? Worse still, it's likely the numerous children you're producing will follow in the footsteps of all the previous children of conservatives. Some few stay, the rest leave for more progressive parts. It's the story of parenting, nothing specific to a political ideology: children grow up into human beings with minds of their own and they're more likely to reject everything you stand for than follow your plan. If anything, all this talk about outbreeding other groups, whoever those other groups are, leaves me worried for the children produced. If closing some baby gap is a real motivation in this, how will you treat the children that don't conform? Last salvo: the first feminists had traditional mothers.

[pedro]

Glimmering, almost every word of that is wrong. But I'm curious -- what lead you into my 2 year old archives?